Wormwood

I was happily going about my days work, which primarily involves writing a Bible study Revelation 8, when mr. King popped his head into my world.  A star is thrown to the earth -- and the star is named wormwood.  It turns the waters bitter.  (This is during the "trumpet" judgments.)  And so I set down my commentary and did a quick glance at wikipedia to see how "Wormwood" is used in cultural references.  In the article, it included a lengthy discussion of Wormwood in the Stephen King works.

Here's the section regarding Stephen King:

• In the Stephen King short story Home Delivery, an alien object enters Earth's orbit and causes the dead to rise as zombies and attack the living; the hellish object, a meteor-sized ball made up of many writhing worms, is referred to as "Star Wormwood."

• Also in "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger," Sylvia Pittson, the preacher-woman in the town of Tull, makes reference to the "Star Wormword" while she speaks of Satan during a Sabbath.(Located on p. 51 of the Revised edition.)

• In another Stephen king book, "Under the Dome," Star Wormwood is mentioned several times by Chef Bushey.

• Star Wormwood is also mentioned by Mother Carmody in both the Novel and Movie of Stephen King's short story The Mist.

• Finally, in King's 2006 novel "Cell," a woman mentions star Wormwood when comparing the previous events in Boston to the Book of Revelation, shortly after Clay, Tom, and Alice leave the city.  wikipedia

In Revelation, Wormwood appears at the third trumpet, after the seals of the book have been broken open.  Wormwood causes the seas to turn bitter; thus making it a reverse miracle of what happened in Exodus at the waters of Mara, where God made the water sweet. 

Warren W. Wiersbe notes that "The word (wormwoo) means undrinkable and in the O.T. was synonymous with sorrow and great calamity.”